Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1887-05-06

slider the lascivious pictorial literature OF tne
day as most tremendous for ruin There Is
no one who can like good pictures better than
do. The quickest and most condensed way
of impressing the public mind is by picture.
What the painter does by his brush for few
favorites the engraver does by his knife
for the million. What the author accom-
plishes by fifty pages the artist does by
flash. The best part of painting that costs
$4,000 you may buy for ten cents FINE
paintings belong to the aristocracy OF art-
Engravings belong to the democracy OF art.
You do well to gather good pictures in your
homes. Spread them before your children
after the tea hour is past and the evening
circle is gathered. Throw them on the in
valids couch. Strew them through the rail
train to cheer the traveller on his journey.
Tack them on the wall of the nursery.
Gather them in albums and portfolios. God
speed the good pictures on their way with
ministries of knowledge and mercyl
But what shall I say of the prostitution OF
this art to purposes of iniquity. These death
warrants of the soul are at every street
corner They smite the vision OF the young
man with pollution. Many a young man
buying copy has bought his eternal DIS
comfture. There may be enough poison IN
one bad picture to poison one soul, and that
soul may poison ten, and ten fifty, ana tne
fifty hundreds and the hundreds thousands,
until nothing but the measuring line OF
eternity can tell the height, and depth, and
ghastliness, and horror of the great undong.
The work of death that the wicked author
does in a whole book the bad engraver may
do on a half side of a pictorial. Under the
guise of pure mirth, the young man buys one
of these Sheets He unrolls it before his COM
rades amid roars of laughter but long after
the paper is gone the result may perhaps be
seen in the blasted imaginations OF those VINO
saw it. The queen of death holds banque5
every night, and these periodicals are inc
printed Invitation to her guests. Alas lnas
the fair brow of American art should pc
blotched with this plague spot, and tnat
philanthropists, botherng themselves about
smaller evils should lift up no united ana
vehement voice against this great calamity
Young man, buy not this moral strychnlne
for your soul! Pick not up this nest OF
cooled adders for your pocket! Patronlze no
news stand that keeps them! Have your
room bright with good engravlngs; put TOT
these outrageous pict0rials have not one wall,
not one bureau not one pocket. Alnah Is no
better than the picture he loves TO iooA az.
If your eyes are not pure your heart caiaiAoe
be. At news stand one can guess the CHAR
acter of a man by the kind OF pictorial ne
purchases When the devil fails to GET a
man to read bad book he sometimes sue
ceeds in getting him to look at bad picture.
When satan goes fishing he does not care
whether it is long line or short line, II ne
only draws his victim in. Beware OF lasclvl-
GUS EDITORIALS, young MANN the name OF Al
mighty God I charge you.
If l have this morning successfully .aj9s
down any principles by which you msy l'iaSs
in regard to books and newspapers, taen
have done something Of which shat not be
ashamed on the day which shall try every
mans work of whatsort it is.
Cherish good books and newspapers. Be-
ware of the bad ones One column
may save your soul; one paragraph may
ruin it, Benjamin Franklin said that the
reading of Cotton Mather's Essay ON Doing
Good" nodded his entire life. The assassin OF
Lord Russell declared that he was led :s1-tso
crime by reading one vivid romance Inc
consecrated John Angel James, than whom
England never produced better man, de-
clared in his old days that he had never yet
got over the evil effects of having for fifteen
minutes once read bad book. But L need
not go so far off. could come near nome
and tell you of something that occurred IN
my college days I could tell you Of a COM
rade who was great hearted, noble and gem
erous. He was studying for an honorable
profession, but he had an infidel book in his
trunk, and he said to me one day: ''De Witt,
would you like to read itgn said: YES,
would" I took the book and read it for only
a few minutes. was really startled with
! what I saw there, and L handed the book
back to him and said: "You had better de-
stroy that book" No, he kept it. He read
it, He reread it. After a while he gave up
religion as a myth. He gave up God
as a nonentity He gave up the
Bible as a fable. He gave up the
church of Christ as useless instl-
tuition He gave up good morals as beng
unnecessarily stringent. have heard OF
him but twice in many years. The time
before the last I heard of him he was con-
firmed inebriate. The last heard OF him ne
was coming out of an insane asyllm-in
body, mind and soul an awful wreck. be-
eve that one infidel book killed him for two
worlds.
Go home to-day and look through your
library, and then, having looked through
YOUR library, look on the stand where you
keep your pictorials and newspapers, and
apply the Christian principles I have laid
down this morning. If there is anything in
your home that cannot stand the test, do not
give it away, for it might spoil an immortal
soul; do not sell it, for the money you get
would be the price of blood, but rather kindle
a fire on your kitchen hearth or in your back
yard and then drop the poison in it, and keep
stirring the blaze until from preface to APP
pendix there shall not be single paragraph
left, and the bonfire in Brooklyn shall be as
consuming as that one in the streets of
Ephesus.